Hate Crimes 2017-2021 - 1323/21

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

1. Please could you provide me with the number of hate crimes reported in each of the following calendar years: 2017,2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.  Please could you also break these figures down into the different types of hate crimes (for example, homophobic, disablist, racial, religious, transphobic).

2. Please could you also provide me with the number of hate incidents reported in each of the following calendar years: 2017,2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.  Please could you also break these figures down into the different types of hate incidents (for example, homophobic, disablist, racial, religious, transphobic).

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted within the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police.  I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

 

I am able to disclose the located information to you within the attached document, however the following caveats should be noted in regards to the information supplied:

• Hate crimes are based on the perception of the victim.
• Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete.  However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes.  The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system.  As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
• The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
• The two data sets are completely distinct.  There may be occasions where a single incident can lead to many crimes being created, and there will be times where no incidents has been recorded for the hate crime as the hate element has come to light at a later stage of the investigation, in view of this, both questions should be viewed independently.
• Each incident is given a final incident code and two qualifying codes.  These codes are applied according to priority in relation to the incident.  It is possible that qualifiers searched for relating to this FOI have not been recorded due to other qualifying codes taking precedence, in this case these incidents will not be captured in the final dataset.